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Heal strengths

10-21-2016, 09:37 PM

NEW POST redoing the format in a way that doesn't rely on actual stats or HP amounts that will eventually be badly outdated. I've also turned the heal calculation below into a link to the post explaining in more detail how it works.

Let's talk about healing strength. This is something that bugs me to no end when i'm talking to my UL friends - that nobody seems to understand what heal AP anything is. I think part of it is confusion after ateam retooled the ability/passive balance a while back, and part of it is that most of my UL friends aren't dedicated clerics, so i'm seeing people talk about it from a perspective of either looking at the ability descriptions or playing around with cleric on the side. As a disclaimer, i don't presume to be the best or smartest cleric in the game, but i pay attention, and this post is going to lay out my opinions on how healing works, along with some math to illustrate.

Regardless, here are all of the current heal stats including passive bonuses assuming book or relic in your main slot. You better have a book or relic in your main slot. If you don't then you're not a cleric, and you shouldn't be carrying heals.

Name

AP

Cost

CD

Heal

70

10

5

Recover

90

11

7

Cure

110

12

9

A.Heal

50

12

15

G.Healing

70

15

17

A.Cure

90

20

22

A.Recovery

70

16

20

Cleanse

60

16

20

Dignity

60

20

30

Aid

120

15

5

G.Aid

90

20

7

Prayer

20

12

7

Hallo/Xmas

40

5

8

It's hard to have a discussion about heal strength without addressing the calculation bolded at the top. You use 69% of your MATK and 46% of your MDEF in AP-based heals. This means that if you need to increase your healing amount it is 50% more efficient to increase MATK than MDEF. Note the bolded portion. If your heals suck, you might consider moving more cost into weapon slots. However, if you aren't dissatisfied with the amount you're healing, you don't need to heal extra. I'm level 106 currently with 3 weapons and have no trouble in any pve content. In pvp my numbers are a bit short of where i'd like them due to HP multipliers. My point is that big heals don't make a good cleric. Not letting anybody die makes you a good cleric. That means you don't have to fill up everybody's HP any time they're missing some. You do need to always have a heal ready when somebody's low, and you will always need the cost to cast it. Efficiency saves the day.

For the following numbers i'm using an approximation of my stats as the basis. I have about 30k MATK and 80k MDEF. It doesn't really matter where your stats are for the purpose of this list - since all heals scale the same with stats, moving the numbers higher or lower won't alter efficiencies relative to each other. I've also calculated the numbers assuming multi-target heals are hitting the signified number of people and not overhealing anybody. Any time you overheal on any spell, you lose efficiency.

Name

Health

HP/Cost

HP/Sec

Heal

40250

4025

8050

Recover

51750

4705

7393

Cure

63250

5271

7028

A.Heal (3)

28750

7188

5750

G.Healing (3)

40250

8050

7103

A.Cure (3)

51750

7763

7057

A.Recovery (3)

40250

7547

6038

Cleanse (3)

34500

6469

5175

Dignity (5)

34500

8625

5750

Aid

69000

4600

13800

G.Aid (3)

51750

7763

22179

Prayer

11500

958

1643

Hallo/Xmas

23000

4600

2875

Looking at the info in both charts, a few things become clear.

1) Prayer is a really bad heal. It costs too much to get a lot of benefit from Cost Recovery, and it does too little to count on for any significant restoration. Least efficient heal on the chart, though obviously it heals better than a basic attack. (I still favor Basic Attack for party utility)
2) Aid is decent after the update! HP/Cost was the lowest of the proficiency heals by a strong margin, but after the update it's a nice strong, non-proc-reliant heal for pvp.
3) Gatorade is expensive to rely upon, but it is far and away the best way to pump out a lot of health over time.
4) Everybody already knew this, but multi-target heals are very cost-efficient. The worst multi target heal is more economical than the best single target.
5) Cure heals for 63250 without any procs. At my level, i have only 55824. You will almost never use Cure in pve without overhealing. Bring Recover instead. I would be bringing Heal if it removed status ailments.
6) The new Halloween weapon ability is slightly worse than Recover in HP/Cost and almost as bad as Prayer in HP/Sec. It's not as OP as people are making it out to be but at least it doesn't suck. Finally Ateam gives us some love in the Basic Attack replacement skill department.

How procs impact efficiencies:

Cost Recovery (process rate: 33% main, 18.5% sub) gives more efficiency to lower cost abilities. With a single proc of the Halloween skill, you're giving back a quarter of an HP bar for free and gaining 1% of your uni gauge. A single proc doubles Heal's cost efficiency and nearly doubles Area Heal's efficiency. Single proc turns Aid into a Heal with slightly better heal power than Cure (so 10ap stronger than the equivalent Heart proc on Heal). Lower cost skills also generally have lower cooldowns, so carrying Recover and Area Heal over Cure and Greater Healing both makes it more likely you'll always have a spell ready and likely saves you some cost in the process. As long as you're healing enough then don't bump up to a stronger spell.

Heart of Health increases healing power by 40ap on all heals in rings 1-4. It will proportionally affect lower-AP spells more strongly, kinda like how Cost Recovery affects lower-cost spells. So again, weaker spells will gain more efficiency, while stronger spells will run a greater risk of overhealing. However, this doesn't necessarily increase heal efficiency. Remain mindful of overhealing when stacking up procs.

Heart of Recovery increases AP of Heal, Recover, and Cure by 40. It's basically the same as HoH but only for those three skills. The main benefit here is the weapons are only 24 cost, so you may be able to fit more procs on a pvp set, increasing effectiveness with large HP pools. There may be a proc rate difference, but i haven't done large enough trials to confirm.

Healing Testament (process rate: 25.5% main, 10% sub) increases heals by a percentage of their HP value (XL seems to be at or just above 40%), so this shouldn't affect efficiencies at all. A benefit to this is it will proc on any AP-based heal, which means a) it's power-creep-proof and b) it will proc on weapon-ability heals as well as regular spells.

Aid Mastery increases AP of Aid and Greater Aid by 60. It also seems to have a higher proc rate than the Heart and Testament skills. Aid becomes 50% stronger and G.Aid becomes 67% stronger. If you're running these skills in pvp this is a great skill to have in main slot ahead of a lot of Cost Recovery. Given the strength of these heals without a boost, i think it's probably a waste of a slot to equip this in pve.

~~~~

So in summation, i think that right now for most questing content, the ideal skillset is:
Recover / Area Heal / Dignity / Area Recovery

Obviously it's not a universal skill set, and people should tailor their skills to their needs. I just cringe every time i see an endgame cleric using Cure or Aid. There are other options which are better in every way for pve situations.

I was most surprised to find out that Gatorade is so efficient. I expected it to be near the bottom of the stack in cost efficiency, but if you can be sure you won't overheal then it's actually pretty good. It's just rare to have a situation where you'd need all that health on three adjacent targets. May be nice for quests like Thanatos with powerful 3-person % damage. The fast cooldown means it should be ready any time the attack goes off. Could also see use in pvp where a big heal could save survivors of a unison / meteorain / crush.

I tested Heart-of procs a while ago. I recall it being a flat AP addition for sure though. I'll see if I can find my notes for more details.

I agree with most of your conclusions, but hopefully you won't mind my nitpicking? >3>

1) The analysis doesn't include casting speeds. The Aid spells and Area Cure are very quick heals, and speed may be important in certain circumstances. For example, needing to heal allies before attacks come in after a unison in PvP.
2) Since the stats don't really matter for comparing burst heal/health per cost/health per second, I recommend looking at the abilities without using stats (since those differ for everyone). For example: Heal would be 70 burst, 0.7 heal power per cost, and 14 heal power per second. That's without any procs. To be really thorough, you might also consider each ability with a single proc, double proc, cost recovery proc, double cost recovery proc, and cost recovery + single proc.
3) Prayer's terrible healing power is useful in an odd way. If you have a PvE Blood Oath mage ally, you can heal them above a dangerous health range without healing them to full. (Not a big deal though, of course. As long as the normal heal comes in after I use Blood Oath, I can't complain. =u=)

Also a question:
Healing Testament doesn't add AP? It increases by a percentage? Did you test this with heals of different strengths and see their values increase by the same percentage?

IGN: Mirabelle | Guild: Too Nice
UL ID: 2104891172

Comment

HotMessExpress I'm not sure about the proc rate on Ama's Favor. My notes only had heal values. >~> Don't feel like testing it right now, but it's probably close to 25% chance in the main slot and 10% in a sub slot. Ama's Favor procs on all heals in the class tree at 4th ring and below (not 5th ring or any basic attack replacements.) Ama's Glory is a Magic Reflection L. The set bonus is +10% status ailment resistance.

I actually love my guildmate's prayer for just that reason. I play a masochistic back row mage and sometimes I just need enough health to get that Fanatic Soul off again. In every other case though, I can't stand prayer, and on my cleric I prefer to keep my basic attack.

Thank you! This is super helpful; I've wanted to know the healing formula for a while now.

Edit: Just finished reading it; I understand where you're coming from on cost efficiency from a math perspective, but I think practical healing doesn't fit the theory in this case. Outside of GvG, most heals will heal a person to full health, so the heal per cost ratio isn't really that important. I think judging heals by cast speed, cooldown, cost, and refresh / cleanse propertiesl makes more sense than the amount of HP restored, with HP restored only relevant for the basic attack replacements Prayer and Halloween Parade.

Comment

I think there's already a lot of stickies, and as others have said in pvp things like heal activation speed (which is a lot harder to quantify) matter too.

I mainly wanted to point out that the biggest heal is often not the best. Remain mindful of max HP numbers. Over healing wastes cost and bigger heals have longer cooldown times, so as long as you can keep up with a smaller heal, the smaller heal wins

Comment

And since somebody asked me recently about why i kick non-clerics with heals, here are the other classes with some generic example stats and their available spells.

Soldier: 20k MATK, 40k MDEF

Name

Health

HP/Cost

HP/Sec

Heal

3320

322

644

Recover

9660

878

1380

Cure

16100

1342

1789

A.Heal (3)

9660

2415

1932

G.Healing (3)

28980

5796

5114

A.Cure (3)

48300

7245

6586

Lancer: 20k MATK, 30k MDEF

Name

Health

HP/Cost

HP/Sec

Heal

2760

276

552

Recover

8280

753

1883

Cure

13800

1150

1533

A.Heal (3)

8280

2070

1656

G.Healing (3)

24840

4968

7384

A.Cure (3)

41400

6210

5645

Archer: 70k MATK, 50k MDEF

Name

Health

HP/Cost

HP/Sec

Heal

7130

713

1426

Recover

21390

1945

3056

Cure

35650

2971

3961

A.Heal (3)

21390

5348

4278

G.Healing (3)

64170

12834

11324

A.Cure (3)

106950

16043

14584

Mage: 90k MATK, 50k MDEF

Name

Health

HP/Cost

HP/Sec

Heal

8510

851

1702

Recover

25530

2321

3647

Cure

42550

3546

4728

A.Heal (3)

25530

6383

5106

G.Healing (3)

76590

15318

13516

A.Cure (3)

127650

19148

17407

I feel like i'm being generous about the stat allocations there, compared to what i generally see in the field when making a party. As you can see, even mage (with far better healing stats than i have, mind you) still gets notably less out of the same spells because of the reworking of direct/passive AP on heals. Keep in mind that non-clerics generally aren't (and shouldn't be) taking weapons with Heart of Health/Recovery/Generosity.

"But i use Cure to remove status defects from the cleric."
A) No you don't. Statistically, this is a non-event in my experience.
B) You could instead carry Area/Mass Refresh and your Cleric will cheer instead of cringe in party lobby.

Comment

Thanks for the info. Now I don't feel so bad about my 7/x/x/x cleric. Just have to grab cost recovery gear.... Damn Athena didn't give me any love for any of my classes.

Also there's been many times in PVE as cleric where someone Breaks but no one starts chain...
Sometimes I only have to use a few group heals up til the boss so it's nice to have basic for when people forget how to combo. Maybe it's just because I main Lancer.

Went in lab tonight and ran out the timer a few times spamming Halloween, Heal, Recover, and Cure. All with a relic in main slot (AP values: 40, 70, 90, 110) and only avaliable procs were Healing Testament XL (main slot) and Cost Recovery (sub slots).

I would take turns alternating two heals (A and B) and writing down the numbers in four columns. Two columns were for non-testament A and B and the two others were for testament proc A and B. I kept casting until i had 100 non-proc casts, which means the proc numbers were small (maybe 15-20 each) so that could be a potential concern for the sake of precision. Still, it was clearly around 40% increase across the board. After A and B i'd swap to C and D and repeat.

At the end, i took the mode of each non-proc column and compared it to the mode of each proc column. I did it this way because the game adds randomness in discreet amounts in a way that i don't quite understand yet. Still, you get a lot of the same numbers over and over, and with enough data you end up with something like a normal distribution around the "expected" value. Comparing the mode of the proc numbers with the mode of the non proc numbers actually landed me dead on 42% in three out of the four heals. However, in each case there was also a number in the proc column that calculated out to 40% of the non-proc mode.

My guess is that the real number is 40% but maybe further testing will show that it's actually 42. I don't have enough numbers yet to say with confidence, but that's definitely the ballpark for Healing Testament XL

consider using Greater Aid + Aid = Diginity Emergency response. I personally prefer to use Greater Aid + Aid + Heal as my response. but people get really kick=happy when they dont see Dignity in my ability list.

im noticing that even with dignity, without any Unison monster support (no haste, reduce cd, stalling,) Dignity just isnt cooling down quick enough to be recasted. I find cost much easier to actively control (through skill procs) than Coolingdown (is there any skill that reduces cooldown on proc??)

Aid is really awful for pve. I realize this post was made before arc came out, but arc is now the superior single target heal. For those without, use recover instead of aid.

When I drop dignity I'm carrying area recovery, cleanse heal, and greater aid. For a full party heal I use G.aid and one of the other two. Spacing the heals on 2 and 4 hits everybody, and G.aid cooldown is short enough that the main concern is the 20 sec cooldown on the other two. You're basically trading 10 seconds of cooldown for a lot of wasted cost and the added functionality of cleanse or recovery (whichever you weren't taking before).

Arc also matches both functions, so if circumstance allows you can hit all four of your other party members - for example if they're debuffed and no longer able to deal damage

Updated OP to reflect changes in the recent update. Ability Power for Aid went from 80 to 120 so it is now the highest AP heal available. It heals 50% more, so the HP/sec and HP/cost efficiencies went up by 50% as well.

Aid and Greater Aid also were supposed to get "faster heal activation times" or something like that, so for those who need quick heals, they both should be even better now (they were faster than average already).

REMEMBER that the largest cures are NOT always the best cures. If you bring Aid to pve you deserve to be kicked and/or have everyone leave your party.

For pvp, Aid is now a little bit more cost efficient than Heal and very nearly as efficient as Recover. Cure still wins by a fair margin in cost efficiency. In time efficiency Aid is the best single target cure by far. It was already better than Heal (second most time efficient) but now it's the clear victor. If you have the cost to back up its use in pvp, it will be a good way to counter damage spikes.

Remember that the Aids don't have as widely available a proc as most of the rest of our spells. Heal/Recover/Cure are all more cost efficient than Aid if you proc a Heart of Health/Recovery, though eyeballing the numbers it looks like only Heal will match it in time efficiency with a single proc

Comment

I've noticed a trend after watching some Elemental Ordeal Arcadia runs on YT.

The clerics were running Great Blessing, Greater Aid, Dignity, Area Recovery + Halloween Heal. And because they were super-powerful parties, at least one person had a cost-restoring monster. I think one of the Clerics I saw had procs for Great Blessing as well.

​When you consider the context in which it's being used, I think this set makes sense. (First wave OHKOs are a possibility in Arcadia when no one is debuffing, so Great Blessing is used. Cost is near-unlimited due to certain monsters and a cheer-party, so Greater Aid is used) HotMessExpress What do you think?

Comment

Greater Aid is really fantastic for pve if you can spare the cost. It's less dependent on stagger uni than other multi-targets and heals a decent amount procless.

Great Blessing has its uses, too. Are you seeing it used as a one-hit defense (via higher max hp) or as a backup full party heal? If all five members are likely to take heavy damage multiple times before dignity can be reused, then it makes sense to use Blessing. It's not a great heal, but it's our only other option to give hp to all five members at once.

Dignity itself is starting to become lackluster if no proc happens, but again it's the only currently available option for what it does.

I haven't run any of the new arcadia elemental quests because ap has been dedicated to half ap cost reforge/augment quests, and colosseum. Maybe after I spend all these saved up gold swords on kronos sword I can start doing real quests again. No room in inventory for me, until colo medals release today

Comment

What made this skill so good is the flexibility, not the healing. Btw, the healing is actually quite nice for end game players. I also think that more clerics should focus more on matk stats instead of def stats. Def does almost nothing.

I agree with you in terms of stats for defense. I've recently dropped all my water monsters for dark and light. Didn't have any good water utility besides avsa anyway. However, MDEF should still be cleric's primary stat because cleric should always have maxed head/body gear slots